Okay, I think we can get started here. So thank you very much, Paul, for joining us. It's a great pleasure to be introducing Paul Thwaite, Chief Executive of NatWest. Paul, you've been CEO since July 2023, prior to which being Chief Executive of the commercial and institutional business. So thank you very much for joining us.
Good to see you, Ben. Good to be here.
Brilliant, brilliant. Let's jump right into the macro. So how are you seeing the backdrop currently evolving in the U.K., and have you seen any meaningful change in client behavior as well in April, or sort of subsequent to that?
Okay, on, I think for the UK macro, I'm sure you had a lot of people talk about the global macro. I think the UK macro has been pretty robust and fairly solid, as I say, relative to expectations. I wouldn't say it's exciting, but I'd say it's fairly robust. GDP for the quarter, 0.7. I think a slightly softer print today, but that's subject to the usual revisions. Inflation probably slightly ahead of kind of expectations, or certainly some expectations. Retail sales very strong in April. There's a bit of kind of holiday seasonality to that. It dropped off in May. Wage inflation still strong. I'd say generally from that perspective, UK macro is robust. I guess then the real insight then is what does that mean for customers? What does that mean for clients? What's changing? What's not changing?
Probably easiest to step through the consumer and, and then, and then into the businesses. On the consumer side, I haven't seen any material change in, in behavior. How do we look at that? We look at the obvious things like mortgage volumes. They've remained fairly robust in the UK market. We had this little peak as you, as you came to the end of the tax year. I'm sure we'll get into that. Even post that, volumes have stayed robust. You look at debit card spending, credit card spending, very consistent patterns, you know, up year on year, probably supported by healthy, healthy wage inflation. Where and how people are spending, consumers are spending their money, same categories. You know, it's not, it's not an essential spend. A lot of it's going on discretionary spend, travel, leisure, hospitality.
Consumers haven't really seen a, we haven't seen any big change in behavior. Saving habits remain strong. You've seen that from a strong ISA season. On businesses, probably more of a mixed picture. I'd say smaller businesses, medium-sized businesses, they're actually more focused on domestic issues than they are the bigger international issues, Ben. Things like national insurance, et cetera, is more on their mind than some of the tariffs. U.K. is obviously a service-led economy. If you look at our book, 70% of commercial and business clients are services rather than production and manufacturing. The smaller end, not that much impact. Small business lending, you know, is robust. It's good. No material changes in how people are drawing down on RCFs or anything like that.
Where you have seen the uncertainty bite a bit more is at the top end, as you'd expect. Those customers trading internationally, investment decisions start to get, you know, people's uncertainty doesn't help that. Maybe they pause. I think our observations would be most things have been paused rather than canceled where people are taking action. M&A activity obviously slowed down, arguably maybe started to pick up a little bit. It's a mixed pattern. Consumer, no big change. Businesses depend, depending on unless they're facing directly into some of the most impacted sectors, I'd say still feels reasonably strong and reasonably good.
Okay, very clear. If we think next about revenues, growth in NII is clearly set to be one of the key drivers of profitability and revenue growth going forward. You have got supportive trends that we have seen in Q1 across margins and volumes. I mean, what are you thinking about moving parts from here? If we think about non-NII, Q1 was pretty strong as well. How much of that do you think is sustainable?
Quite a lot of questions in there. On the, so on revenues, on income overall and revenues overall. It was obviously, as you alluded to, a very strong quarter one. You know, I think over 15% up year on year, which is good. I think most encouraging from my perspective is it's quite broad-based. You know, you can see growth, volume growth in most of our businesses and on both sides of the balance sheet. As you said in the latter part of your question, we also had a strong quarter on kind of fee income and non-interest income, mainly out of our, not exclusively, but mainly out of our commercial and institutional business. That felt good.
That is why we felt confident, I guess, to improve the guidance towards the top end of the range. That is the context. In terms of the moving parts, as you look at the P&L or you look at net interest income, you have got the volume side. We just touched on that in the first question. You know, we still expect volumes to be supportive. We are at that time in the year on the margin side where the structural hedge is almost 90% locked in or will be by the end of June. We completed our Sainsbury's acquisition on the 1st of May. That will obviously flow through into the numbers for the rest of the year.
They feel like positive, the kind of tailwinds. The flip side of that is we're still, you know, we've been actually consistent since the start of the year. We, you know, about our predictions on rates. We're still expecting another two rate cuts. So you've still got that to kind of play through for the second half of the year. That's on net interest income. It's some tailwinds and, you know, the obvious, the kind of the rate outlook just to kind of temper that a little bit. On non-interest income, yeah, I mean, we've had a series of good quarters. Quarter one was another one, 8% up year on year.
Primarily out to CNI, as I said, you know, strong on currencies, stronger on rates, good capital markets activity supporting our core clients. Quarter one tends to be a seasonal high, but we've, you know, we've been encouraged that the volatilities continue to, by definition, you know, some of those underlying trends have continued. I would not want people to extrapolate quarter one, but on the other hand, there are some good tailwinds there. Net net, Ben, if you look across kind of net interest income piece and the fee income, you know, we feel good with where we are on kind of income momentum and income trajectory.
Very clear. If we think next about simplification, that's been a key focus of the recent plan.
Yeah.
How are you thinking around how you're pairing that simplification drive with investment in the business? Maybe on a slightly related topic for digitalization, how is that driving the group strategy and what's the broader outlook you see for digital banking within the U.K.?
Maybe start with the last part of the question. I mean, I think the U.K., I think it's one of, you know, if you look across a number of different markets, certainly the more developed markets, I think the U.K. is one of the most advanced from a digital perspective. I think there are some other markets which are certainly kind of more digitized, but the U.K. in many respects has been at the forefront of that. It's had a vibrant fintech community. It's had a relatively vibrant, certainly post-financial crisis, kind of challenger bank community. I think that's up the game. It's up the bar in terms of digitalization, digital experience, customer experience. I think everybody, including the large incumbents, has been investing in that. That's for the good of the customer.
You know, I think if you're a UK consumer or a UK business, you, I think you can get brilliant digital banking experiences if that's, if that's how you wanna do your, you know, your mobile banking or your, or whatever it may be. I think that's the context for the U.K. It's a pretty, a pretty advanced at the, what I would say at the kind of customer interface, and the customer journeys. If you look at us and simplification, if you take our retail bank, it's a high, it is a highly digitized retail bank, 19 million customers, 80, 80%, just over 80% of them are digital only. That gives you a bit of a sense of the, the size and the scale. If you look at the commercial bank, 83% are digital first.
Wealth, it's a slightly, slightly for understandable reasons, a slightly smaller number given the, I guess, the banker-led advice proposition. From that perspective, retail bank is highly digitized. I was looking at the stats with the team the other day, 98% of credit cards are basically digital applications, 97% of loans. It's a similar number for small business loans. Not only is it a highly digitized market, you know, we're a highly digitized bank. From that perspective, there's been a lot of progress. You started with a question, I guess you linked it to simplification. To me, whilst they're different, it's hard to decouple the two. You know, the whole ethos behind the simplification agenda is, first of all, actually not to make, not to make it only a technology agenda.
I do think banks and certainly, you know, NatWest can do a lot of simplification that isn't about tech, but inevitably there is a big part of it that is tech-led. It's simplification of, I'd say, the tech estate, the infrastructure. You know, we have plans to decommission 600 of our applications. That's a big percentage of our overall applications. Another example would be, you know, we're moving from 29 customer data sets to a couple over the course of the next year. We're around half of our businesses in the cloud. There's a lot more, a lot more we can do.
I guess this intersection of simplification, digitization, not just at the customer experience end, but also in it across the tech stack and across the IT infrastructure is at the heart of the strategy. 'Cause we get that right, you know, and I think we've made great progress, but I think there's a lot more we can do over the next couple of years. If we get that right, you know, the virtuous cycle there is much better customer experience 'cause you, you know, reliability, speed to market, functionality updates is better. You're also creating healthy operational operating leverage, which is great, but you're also creating a lot more resilience and stability and given everything that's going on, that's important for us. It's important to our customers and it's incredibly important to our regulators.
That's the virtuous cycle that we're trying to create. The more, I think the larger banks, you know, the amount of investment that we have available, I think scale's important in that context. We can invest in that simplification agenda. I just wanna kind of keep going at it.
Let's wrap that all into a, a financial outlook. For costs, you're targeting about GBP 8.1 billion in other operating expenses this year, including GBP 0.1 billion of one-time integration costs.
Yeah.
Within that, Q1 was a bit of a lower print with GBP 1.9 billion. How are you thinking about the moving parts beneath the surface from here?
Yep. So yeah, GBP 8.1 billion , including the one-off integration costs. Feel very confident about, about the annual guidance. I think we've got multi-year track record. We're very, we're very clear on costs. We, we do, you know, we, we deliver against that line. I always point out, Ben, you, and you, you know this, but for everybody's benefit, our cost number is an all-in number. You know, there's everything that's in there. There's nothing above the line or below the line. It's the OpEx of running the business. It's any restructuring charges, that we have, be they property or, or people. It takes in the investment budget. It takes in the inflation budget. So it's one, it's one number. You know, there's no, there's no smokes and mirrors in, in that regard. Quarter one was a low print. Some of that is just phasing.
I'd encourage you and everybody else to think about the whole year number. Some of it is when different investments and different restructuring charges come through. It was a low print in quarter one. You should expect it to be slightly higher in quarter two, but as I said, very confident about the year-end outturn. In terms of the moving parts on costs, you know, things that are pushing costs up are wage inflation running about 3.5%. That drops in April. National insurance tax changes obviously drop through in April as well. Tech contract inflation, you know, that drops through as you renew them. You do not renew all those contracts. You renew a proportion of them.
But then the offsets are, we're working very hard on, you know, basically driving efficiencies in the business. Significant kind of, you've seen branch closures. You've also seen property consolidations. We exited our kind of Poland hub operation. We've relocated a lot of operations in our wealth business from Switzerland to the U.K. and India, lower cost locations. As a management team, you know, we recognize inevitable, like all banks, you've got some inevitable cost pressures, but on the other side, you have to work very hard and drive multi-year efficiencies. Feel pleased with the work that we're doing. Feel very confident in the guidance. I guess the natural incentive we have is the more we can invest in the business to deliver, to create capacity allows us to go even faster on driving those efficiencies out.
Very clear. If we pivot to asset quality next, you're targeting a loan impairment rate below 20 basis points.
Yeah.
Could you talk through some of the factors that give you confidence in achieving that? If any of the individual business lines therein have changed at all over recent months?
Yeah. I think the context for NatWest there is given what the bank is now, you know, it's a U.K.-centric kind of prime retail and commercial bank. It, in many respects, is a very low-risk business model in the context of banks. We've guided to less than 20 basis points. If you look across the last couple of, or number of years, you can see the cost of risk in the business has been very low. You look at the business lines, you know, and kind of think about how that's panning out. Take mortgages. The majority of customers now have moved from lower rates to higher rates.
I think we're up to over 70% have now moved from the lower rates to the, you know, they're refinancing at 3% or 4%. You can see in the data, impairments haven't moved at all. Credit cards, again, no, no signs of stress there. We feel very comfortable about the consumer kind of consumer asset quality, consumer credit quality. On the business side of things, on the credit side again, I think incredibly resilient over multi-years, whether it's through the pandemic, whether it's through, you know, the spike, the spiking rates, whether it's through some of the consumer pressures playing through into business, you know, underlying impairments and cost of risk on the commercial side have been very low. That's really because it's, A, it's by definition a kind of prime asset book.
You know, we're not competing in kind of near prime or subprime on the consumer or the business side. And relative leverage is, in those core businesses, is relatively low. So feel very confident about the less than 20 basis points cost of risk. Worth pointing out that within that, the Sainsbury's acquisition brings on two basis points, but that's in that number. In effect, that, again, it's an all-in number. It will be a one-off that comes through, but that's in the below 20 basis points cost of risk.
Yeah, we spend a lot of time as a team looking over the asset portfolios, looking for signs that things are deteriorating, looking for any kind of commonalities in defaults on the commercial or corporate side, but most of them are quite idiosyncratic where you've had one-off losses. Credit quality still feels strong and we're not flagging any deterioration in portfolio at this stage.
Okay. Thinking about strategy now.
Yeah.
You've been CEO for close to two years. How are you assessing how the strategy is currently progressing? Across the three businesses, where are you seeing most opportunities for growth?
Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, it's coming up for two years. I mean, I think the good news is that the, well, the strategy's simple. I think the investment thesis is simple and the strategy's working. And so that's, that's a good place to be in. You know, I think that it's, we try and, we try and articulate it in a very simple way. So we're looking to grow, but in a disciplined way. We're looking to simplify. You touched on that and we've been looking to get a lot more active around the balance sheet and risk management. And I think if you look across the three pillars, we can show quarter-on-quarter progress.
We've touched on simplification, but on balance sheet management and risk management, we've obviously been a lot more active around some of the instruments that we've used to, you know, to increase our capital velocity, lay off some of our credit risk. And that's, you know, that's helped support returns. Those two pillars are good. On the growth side, you know, there is a track record of, if you look multi-year in the business, there's a track record of growth on both sides of the balance sheet and in both of the, you know, the larger businesses in retail and commercial. I'm very confident we can grow all three of our customer businesses, taking them one by one. You look at our retail business, it's a great business, but it's still got a lot of runway.
If you look at some of the key kind of customer segments and some of the key products, whilst we've made a lot of progress in mortgages, we've made a lot of progress in consumer credit and cards, we're still below our natural market share. If you look at our, you know, our share of the UK population and kind of primary banking. There are obvious areas for us to continue to grow in. Really good progress, but I think there's more that we can go after. Likewise, distribution of investment products, savings products to our retail customer base. We still think there's a, you know, a more, a more natural place for us to be from a market share. Retail, we think there's opportunities.
Commercial and institutional has a slightly different picture in as much as our market shares are so much stronger in most of the customer segments. Really, it's about bringing the whole of the bank, more of the whole of the bank to those customers rather than a kind of volume customer play. If you look at some of those areas like asset finance, project finance, infrastructure, trade finance, we've had great success bringing more of our currencies and rates products to our core commercial clients. To me, that's where the runway is. We've got some really deep specialisms in infrastructure, in project finance, in sustainable financing. My view is that the macro trends, affordable housing, social housing would be another one.
To me, we're playing into what I would say are both, well, arguably some global trends, but certainly some kind of UK trends. It's where the government's policy agenda is focused. It's where we have deeper specialism and expertise. That's where I see the potential in the commercial business. In our wealth and private banking business, it's, you know, it's demonstrably smaller relative to the two other businesses in the group. We're optimistic and ambitious about the opportunities there. We've got an investor day coming up in, I think, two weeks actually, where we'll talk more about that specifically. That'll be the first investor day we've done on our wealth business for a while. At its heart, we've got some great assets there.
You know, we've got a great, we've got some great brands. We've got a very strong banking kind of proposition. Where we underpunch our weight is on the investment side. The real opportunity there is to get more of our private bank clients doing more from an investment perspective, but also get more of our affluent and retail clients taking more of those investment products. That's a focus for management, for all the obvious reasons. You know, again, demographic trends, all the things you know, Ben, demographic trends, capital-like product, recurring revenues. We've got, as I say, we've got the brands, we've got the customer base, we've increasingly got the product set. To me, that's a kind of delivery and execution.
That gives us, I say, cause for optimism across what I call the latent growth potential of the three businesses. If you can grow those businesses whilst working the balance sheet harder, as we have done, and simplifying the business, that should be a nice mix in terms of capital generation and returns.
We think about the next or other phase of growth in terms of what you can do inorganically.
Yeah.
How is M&A currently fitting within your broader framework? I know you've done some bolt-on deals recently with Sainsbury's and Metro. Is there anything you've learned from those processes and how's the integration progressing?
Yeah. On the, we're pleased with the couple of kind of smaller bolt-on deals. The opportunities presented themselves. The financial returns were compelling. I think we executed quickly, and doing those sort of deals both add scale to our retail business. Sainsbury's brings another million customers, growth on both sides of the balance sheet. Metro is more of a kind of mortgage asset play. We're pleased with them. Metro completed in quarter four, 2024. As I think I said earlier, Sainsbury's completed on the 1st of May. From that perspective, good. You always learn with both positively and things for the future. What are the key things we've learned from these couple of deals?
One is, I think, our sophistication around how to engage customers as they join us, how to retain them as, you know, we've learned a lot there and that, that's improving. I think we've got some great case studies around how to retain, so take the MetroD eal and mortgage customers, how to retain those customers, how to engage them, bring them, you know, bring them in, into the NatWest brand. We've certainly learned that. What has also been excellent is in effect, these deals test your systems, your policies, your processes, your integration skills. You learn from that. You know, in our mind, we've proven that we can add, you know, we can bring customers in, we can bring products across, add them to our platform, at relatively low marginal costs.
That gives us confidence in our ability to execute. Like any discipline, whether it's an organic activity or an inorganic activity, your kind of muscle grows because you get used to it, you can do these things quicker. That's probably what we've learned. More broadly on the inorganic stance, yeah, I think I've been consistent, arguably boringly consistent. The business is generating very good returns. We've got targets greater than 15% by 2027, but out to 2027, anything that we look at has to be genuinely financially compelling versus deploying capital in the business, returning it to shareholders through buybacks. Myself and the board will be very, very, very disciplined around that. It's a very high financial bar.
It's also a, yeah, and some will have heard me talk about this before. It's a very high operational bar as well. You know, I'm very, we're very mindful of management distraction. We think we have an exciting organic plan. So things that could distract from that, you know, whether it's contention in terms of, you know, resources or just, just management bandwidth. It's not only a, a kind of pure financial lens, which is the primary lens, but that then also there's a whole operation, a set of operational considerations. We'll be, we'll be very disciplined, you know, even with the share price trading where it is, we still think buybacks make, you know, a lot of sense at the current value. Yeah, the bolt-ons are good. If others come, we'll look, but we'll just be cold-eyed.
We'll just be cold-eyed around those transactions. If we can add scale at financially compelling returns in a way that doesn't distract management, you know, a good management team should consider that. If it doesn't satisfy those criteria, we won't be looking.
Okay. Before we open up to audience Q&A, just wanted to pick up on one of the last points you mentioned in terms of buybacks. In terms of the payout, recently you increased the ordinary dividend payout ratio to 50% and indicated you'll consider buybacks as appropriate. How are you making that prioritization between additional growth and additional buybacks?
Yeah. Yeah. So we, yeah, so we've increased the ordinary to 50%. I think we did that in February from, from memory, from 40%- 50%. We're confident to do that because as the government shareholding came down, we knew that the role for directed buybacks is gonna diminish. Obviously, we're now at the stage where the government is no longer a shareholder. So kind of directed buybacks from that perspective are off the table. That was some of the background context to increasing the ordinary dividend. If you look at the business, you know, I think we finished quarter one at 13.8% from a CT1 ratio. We're highly capital generative. We generated, I think, 49 basis points of capital in quarter one, even allowing for the growth, you know, deploying more RWAs against some of the growth.
We're very happy to operate within that 13%-14%. At quarter one, there was still a potential for a kind of a cleanup, directed buyback. Obviously, that's now off the table because the government's trading plan has got rid of the residual shareholding. Yeah, as I said, my view is even at these valuations, buybacks still make a lot of sense. We'll look at it at the 1/2 year with the board, and that's a consistent process. You know, we do it at the 1/2 year and we do it at the full year. In the absence of directed buyback, we obviously, you know, I think we're generating enough capital to both grow the business and think about returns, you know, returns to shareholders. I know how important that is to the investment case.
Again, that's been what I've been saying for, you know, for nearly 24 months.
Brilliant. Let's open it up to the audience to see if anyone has any questions at the back. If you just.
Hello. Yeah. You mentioned about the buyback impact of the government ownership. Is there anything else that changes now that the government's out in terms of either balance sheet capital, restructuring, management of the debt basis? Just internally, what changes?
Yeah. So the simple answer is no. You know, the final couple of percent do not change anything from a balance sheet capital liquidity perspective. That is the simple answer. Likewise, on the management side, nothing changes. In many ways, it is a symbolic moment for, you know, for colleagues, certainly those who were with the bank back in 2008. From a strategic perspective, it is not a symbolic moment. You know, I think the plans that we laid out, I laid out nearly two years ago, they are clear, they are working. We want to be very consistent in that respect. No fundamental change.
If not, maybe one from me, just on thinking about ISAs and savings more broadly.
Yeah.
There's been talk about limiting the cash ISA allowance and pushing some of that more into shares. How would you see that as an opportunity or a threat over the medium term for the business?
Yeah, there's certainly been, there's been plenty of, I guess, discourse around ISAs, which I understand because I think in the U.K. it's a, it's a, kind of, on one hand, it's quite a small topic, but everybody can relate to it. To me, it's been a bit of a proxy debate or proxy for a broader debate, I think, around saving, savings and investment habits of the, you know, of the UK population. It was a very lively ISA season for those who follow the Bank of England data. You can see that's probably a larger ISA season in 2025, certainly was a larger ISA season in 2025 than it was in 2024.
I think that's actually perpetuated by the, I guess, the discussion and debate around, is ISA, are ISAs gonna change? Is the amount that you can invest gonna change? Is it gonna go up? Is it gonna go down? Is it gonna be in cash? Is it gonna be in equities? I think that's some of the undercurrents of the livelier kind of ISA season, albeit the trends have moderated pretty quickly once you've gone through the end of the tax year. More broadly on the topic, Ben, what I would say is, I would encourage a much wider discussion on savings and investments. Whilst ISAs are one path, one product, important product, to me, they're just one product. Yeah.
I think if the wider intention is to get more of the UK population saving on a more regular basis to prepare better for their retirement, then that's a good debate to have. It's an important debate to have given some of the demographics. I think the FCA review of financial advice, you know, advice and guidance boundary is very important. To me, that's a slightly bigger question of which ISAs is part. I welcome that. We're gonna contribute to that. I don't get too hung up on what I call some of the product specifics. You know, there's a lot of cash in ISAs. From a policy perspective, I can't see a situation where all that cash isn't grandfathered across into any new ISA construct.
Really, the debate is, are the right incentives in place to encourage consumers to both save, but also to save in a way that generates the returns that are possible in a way that's aligned to their particular risk appetite. I think that's where the sharp end of the debate would be. The last part of your question, is it opportunity or threat? I think it's an opportunity in its broader sense because an environment that encourages more savings, more investments. I think large banks who have, you know, in our case, 19 million going on for 20 million customers are very well placed to support consumers with their broad range of saving needs, whether it's instant access, term deposits, ISAs, pensions. To me, that's opportunity.
You know, to me, it feels very uncomfortable that only 8% of the UK population got financial advice last year. You know, that does not feel like that is an advice market that is working well. In that sense, I see opportunity. I think if you drop down then to opportunities and threats, at a product level, I think there will be both. I think, and for different institutions, it might mean different things. Some institutions obviously are more heavily dependent on, in effect, what are cash deposits, ISA savings for their funding. We are long deposits, we are long liquidity. From that perspective, that is not a big issue for us.
I really want that public debate to happen from a customer lens in rather than from an institutional lens out because I think ultimately the problem the country should, is trying to solve and needs to solve is how to get more of the UK population saving and investing in a risk appropriate way.
One final question from me would just be on ring fencing. There has been discussion around the, you know, potential merits of removing that.
Yeah.
Could you talk around what you would see as the opportunity for NatWest if ring fencing is removed and how it might change broader industry competition for deposits and loans?
Yeah. It's a, it's again, it's a live, it's a relatively live topic. I mean, my starting position on that is that when ring fencing was introduced for some very, very important, but very, some very specific purposes, as the regulation has evolved over time, you know, be it the capital and liquidity regs, be it the resolution regime, many aspects of ring fencing have been superseded. That's just natural, cumulative impact of regs. Not that anybody was trying to duplicate or replicate. That's why I think it's a valid debate, especially at a time where, you know, governments and regulators are looking to balance regulation and growth. That's why, you know, the topic is live.
When I look at it, you know, you referred to my previous role running the corporate and institutional bank, I could see every day how ring fencing in effect had impacts on how we served clients and therefore the friction it created, you know, companies having to contract with two different entities, go through two different levels of governance, et cetera. When some of the underpinning intentions are no longer valid because you've got other regulations, you know, I think that's a relevant debate to have. For us, we have a relatively, you know, what I call a relatively narrow, non-ring fence bank. The big impact or opportunity for NatWest is just to be able to serve its clients better rather than having to contract with two different entities.
Yes, there is trapped capital, there's trapped liquidity. That means different things for different, depending on how people have designed their ring fence. You know, there's narrow ring fences and there's broad ring fences. The impacts are different for different institutions. My view is, you know, we can improve things for customers. I think we can free up more capital to support the UK economy without jeopardizing any of the financial stability, which is crucially important to the U.K. banking sector.
Understood. Unfortunately, I think we're out of time, but thank you very much Paul for joining us and for your insights.
Thank you, Ben. Appreciate it.